Locating the Influencer: Place and Platform in Global Tourism

Contrasting the production and distribution of television travel shows and travel vlogs, the second chapter proposes a critical political economy approach foregrounding socio-technical power relations in global tourism, and the empowerment tactics employed therein. The vast majority of television travel shows involve professional crews, large budgets and scripted storyboards. In stark contrast, travel vlogs are, by and large, low-budget productions, providing intimate travel advice from a first-person perspective. The researched travel influencers secured their livelihoods by combining various streams of revenue, including content monetisation, product sponsorship and collaborations with tourism organisations. Both television travel shows and travel vlogs are global cultural flows circulating through the interfaces of Internet technologies. Disseminating global knowledge about travel destinations, streaming services and video-sharing platforms render travel content into global forms. The researched travel influencers produced such global forms for circulation on digital platforms and brought place images from tourism destinations to platform audiences.

Drawing on an ethnographic case of video production at the tourist sites of Angkor Wat, this chapter assesses how the researched travel influencers maintained a balance between work and leisure during their travels. The temple complex is comprised of multiple place assemblages that are connected to YouTubers and their audiences. Video-making practices in tourist places empower place-making activities from below. The video shoot described therein demonstrates the evolution of organic place-making through bottom-up local video production. Touristic video-making practices leave an imprint in the imaginaries about travel destinations. Articulating their voices as embedded first-person narrators, the travel influencers under investigation sought to provide their audiences with travel advice on accommodation, restaurants, and landmarks.

This chapter describes in empirical detail the collaborations between travel influencers and local tourism professionals. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from two creators’ camps in Tallinn, the chapter unveils how forms of enumeration materialised in the situated practices of ‘influencer events’. The increased demand for platform-orientated labour in the global tourism industry reshuffled its system of professions. New tasks and job profiles emerged for tourism professionals. The taskscapes of tourism professionals in Estonia have been pervaded by platfomisation processes. The case of the creators’ camps reveals that the encounter between destination stakeholders and travel influencers is governed by numerical indicators built into the metrical affordances of YouTube and other digital platforms. The career advancement and professional collaborations of the researched travel influencers were deeply entangled in metric systems. Competing over watch time, subscriber numbers and video clicks on YouTube, they embodied a metrified sense of self-evaluation.

This chapter examines the tactics that travel influencers pursued to circulate popular content on YouTube. They gathered practical expertise on algorithms which has been widely shared on digital platforms by algorithmic experts. The abstract knowledge about algorithmic mediation has become a global form as it circulates on YouTube and Instagram. The chapter traces how YouTube videos portraying the tourism destination Chiang Mai are connected to further YouTube videos through the platform’s ‘related videos’ curation. Drawing on computational data about the recommender network, the case provides insights into how YouTube’s video recommendation algorithm suggests videos to its viewers. The algorithm predominately organised video content connected to vlogs on Chiang Mai into groups based on semantic similarities of video titles and keywords. The case study finds that the recommendation algorithm acts as a classification technology establishing hierarchical orders of travel video content and video subgenres.

This chapter illuminates the formation of imaginaries about Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. YouTubers who showcase the Botanic Gardens in their videos participate in the meaning-making processes surrounding the site. The case study demonstrated how YouTube can empower local video-makers to articulate their ways of seeing the Botanic Gardens and participate in the construction of imaginaries about the site. The researched travel influencers circulated videos containing place images of the attractions and landmarks at the gardens. YouTube videos have increasingly shaped imaginaries about the plant conservatory. Singapore’s Botanic Gardens are examples of place-assemblages interlocked with other assemblages such as the expert systems producing guidebooks for the gardens. The case also shows that digital platforms can amplify neocolonial narratives that describe tourist attractions as objects of consumption and possession, and thereby pre-arrange neocolonial encounters between locals and visitors.

This chapter addresses the circulation of anthropocenic imaginings on YouTube. Travelling to a multitude of tourist sites, many travel influencers became aware of the unpredictability of the weather and the increasing destabilisation of annual cycles of drought and flooding. The sustainable tourist site Kolarbyn epitomises how travel influencers shaped meanings attached to the Anthropocene and sustainable tourism through their video production. The eco-lodge is a further example of a place-assemblage that is entangled with other assemblages, such as commodity chains and digital platforms. By portraying the eco-lodge in YouTube videos, travel influencers connect the alternative tourism destination to platform audiences. The case of Kolarbyn shows that climate agency can be attributed to YouTubers whose popular videos can reinforce the dissemination of anthropocenic imaginaries and campaigns for climate justice.